Rogue Pentagon boffinry overlords have decided to weigh into a hot new crazy-science field: That of the mysterious Casimir Force, the tendency of nanoscopic, barely perceptible spacetime ripples - lapping at the edges of the "quantum vacuum" in which all matter exists - to push things together.
Casimir stickiness, at present, is …

"control and manipulate... repulsive forces.."

Writing Style

Why is it that whenever you guys write about DARPA you descend into this weird writing style? Is it just because all you're really doing is copying and pasting the report from somewhere else, so you feel you have to pad it out a bit first? Whatever, it's tedious having to read twice as much article to get the same amount of news.

Unlimited Imagination

> "... the ability to seize control of living creatures from within, allowing soulless mechanoid intelligences to wear their hapless, cored victims like fleshy cloaks."

I always wondered why the Terminators were machines with artificial skin (or even impossibly difficult to make liquid metal machines), instead of humans with nanobots controlling them from within - surely the latter would be a cheaper and more effective approach - take over a human or animal and pack explosives up his/her/its you-know-what ....

Mine's the off-smelling, skin-coloured anorak, thanks.

PS: I'm glad to see some of your smilies/icons have been restored to the old versions, but there's a few more to go .... Linux, Love, Flame and the Skull 'n' Crossbones at least. Please?

Hahahaha!

The Gary Owen Curved Ball ......... Up into AIR and into the Fray

"Such machinery is expected to offer a host of benefits, not least the ability to seize control of living creatures from within, allowing soulless mechanoid intelligences to wear their hapless, cored victims like fleshy cloaks."

Lewis,

I doubt they are soulless and would XXXXPect them All Totally Aware..... SMARTer Enabled Led. That makes them Together Randomly Unique and in Flux with Flexible Flow. ....... and Using Unbreakable Cryptography Communication Needs and Feeds for Simple Critical Logistic Supplies.Toys and Hardware.

Bells and Baubles in Big Picture Red Team Games ...... with Prize Bulls Impeccably Behaved in the China Shop.

Sometimes it does seem as if DARPA are too busy reinventing the Wheel rather than Using ITs Engines.

projectile weapons

I'm not sure it could help projectile wepons much... if you had a low friction bullet, it might just sit in the barrel as the gas blew past it. Actually, getting it to sit anywhere might be a problem. If you did get it moving (rail gun?) wouldn't it just fly through you w/o leaving much energy in you to break stuff? Although it might have a really cool trajectory.

Star Trek Was Never Fiction

Yeah well, DARPA is in the least making a real attempt at getting somewhere beyond the mediocre understood consensus physics we are bored with in the Universities. They know something is there and are trying to get someone to do something with it.

No problem amusing us while also bringing such things to the light of day.

More realistically...

Odin: Photon Space Sailer?

So we'll have spaceships propelled by giant metal-fabric sails? Cool! "Space-hoist the space-mainsail, space-bosun! Get to the space-mizzentops, ya space-scurvy space-rats! Space it, this space is spacing spaced!"

DARPA

@projectile weapons

Simply being frictionless doesn't mean it can't impart energy onto something. The high pressure will push the bullet regardless of friction. Similarly, a high speed bullet will slam into something and push it (causing the damaging shockwave) without the effects of friction; much in the same way that a fist, frictionless or not, would crush a nose if applied with enough force.

Goldenballs at dawn

Run for the Hills! Prepare your particle cannons! Can you luddites not see that messing with Casimir stickiness will rip the fabric of spacetime and cause us all to DISAPPEAR INTO A BLACK HOLE? The universe is doomed.